Nixon CD-ROM Due

Richard Nixon’s audiotapes were pretty interesting, but let’s face it, they were recorded on yesterday’s technology. This is the digital age, so Graphix Zone in Irvine figured it was about time to put our only president to take early retirement on CD-ROM.

Graphix Zone, best known for making multimedia CD--ROMs that feature music stars such as Bob Dylan, is scheduled to release its latest production, “Nixon The CD-ROM,” today, exactly 24 years after the Watergate break-in.

The CD-ROM includes thousands of pages of documents, Watergate tape transcripts and the screenplay to Oliver Stone’s controversial film on Nixon. There is even a three-dimensional rendering of a “secret” White House, with the Oval Office, a tape room and an office for Gordon Liddy and the rest of the so-called “plumbers” in charge of political dirty tricks.

Among the consultants on the project were John Dean, Nixon’s former counsel; Daniel Ellsberg, a Pentagon official who was one of the plumbers’ first targets; and Alexander Butterfield, who first revealed the existence of the White House taping system that undid a president.

The disc is priced at $39.95.

Greg Miller covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at greg.miller@latimes.com